U.S. Sen. JD Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, will deliver a speech Monday targeting evangelical voters in metro Atlanta with a stop that marks a delicate moment on Georgia’s campaign trail.
The Georgia Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual dinner at the Cobb Galleria Centre will be the first time Gov. Brian Kemp and Vance will attend the same event in Georgia this election season as Republicans try to unite against Vice President Kamala Harris.
It also comes a day after the FBI said Trump was the target of “what appears to be an attempted assassination” at his Florida golf club, nine weeks after the GOP nominee survived an earlier attempt on his life. Vance said Sunday he’ll be “hugging my kids extra tight tonight and saying a prayer of gratitude.”
Vance was among the Republicans who helped broker a truce between Kemp and Trump after the former president abruptly berated the governor at a rally in Atlanta in August, leaving many Kemp allies confused and irritated by the surprise attack.
Trump has since declared all was forgiven, and Kemp, who has long maintained his support for the GOP nominee, has worked to move beyond what he has called the “distraction” of the one-sided feud.
Vance’s event is the first of back-to-back visits to Georgia this week from presidential running mates. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ pick for the No. 2 job, plans stops in Macon and Atlanta on Tuesday.
Vance and Kemp will headline a loaded lineup for the coalition, which said it will mount the largest voter outreach initiative “targeting voters of faith and conservatives in Georgia history.”
Other speakers include U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, Georgia U.S. Reps. Mike Collins and Barry Loudermilk, state Attorney General Chris Carr and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a onetime Democrat who is now an honorary co-chair for Trump’s transition team.
Vance’s trip comes days after a mass shooting at a Barrow County high school that left two teachers and two students dead and brought the issue of gun violence back to the forefront of the race. A 14-year-old student is charged with using a semiautomatic weapon to carry out the attack.
Democrats have condemned Vance for responding to the Sept. 4 shooting by saying: “I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools.”
A spokesman for Vance said Democratic critics took the senator’s comments out of context and noted he also called the shooting an “awful tragedy” carried out by an “absolute barbarian.”
It will be Vance’s third campaign stop in Georgia since Trump tapped him as his running mate. The Ohio senator stumped at the August rally with Trump in Atlanta and traveled to Valdosta a few weeks later to rev up conservative voters in a deep-red part of the state.
Trump supporters hope Vance can motivate evangelical voters who sometimes skip presidential elections. Ralph Reed, a close Trump ally who founded the Faith & Freedom Coalition, said Vance “knows how to fight for his beliefs and speak common sense and the truth without apology.”
And Mack Parnell, head of the coalition’s Georgia chapter, highlighted Vance’s conservative stances on immigration, abortion and taxes as he said Trump has “no better partner” in his campaign for the White House than the Ohio Republican.
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